Topics in Free Will

The conditional,if an agent did something, then the agent could have done otherwise, is analyzed usingstit theory, which is a logic of seeing to it that based on agents making choices in the context of branching time. The truth of the conditional is found to be a subtle matter that depends on how it is interpreted (e.g., on what otherwise refers to, and on the difference between could and might) and also on whether or not there are busy choosers that (...) can make infinitely many choices in a finite span of time. (shrink)

The nature of the real self -- Whole person and duality -- How nature is dual -- Real self and false self -- A primary certainty -- Certainty in the self -- The original cogito argument -- Overcoming representation -- The theory of right and wrong -- The defining principle -- Narrowing the definition -- The centrality of reason -- A question of proof -- Reason and intelligence -- A universal activity -- Human and animal consciousness -- Anti-spiritual assumptions -- (...) Intellect and religious ideals -- Creativity and spirituality -- The anomaly of creativity -- An archetypal view of creation -- Creativity resistant to systems -- Conforming to the divine pattern -- Happiness and the extension of time -- Happiness distinct from pleasure -- Implications for ascetic values -- Collective suffering -- Transcendence and normal experience -- The inner duality of consciousness -- The core of consciousness -- Theology and reductionism -- A radical conclusion -- The abstract and the concrete -- Common sense concreteness -- Mediation by living organisms -- Spirituality and power -- The freedom of the will -- Confusions about free will -- Free will and release from fate -- Arguments for free will -- Freedom and knowledge of truth -- The law of action and reaction -- Sources in scripture -- The causal principle and continuity -- What controls the world? -- Causality includes free will -- Choice of the lesser evil -- Apparent breaches of the law -- The insentience of the active faculties -- Cosmic reaction and judgement -- Consequences for modern religion -- Providence and fate -- Forms of cosmic order -- Providence and archetypal order -- Fate, providence, and salvation -- Fate and astrology. (shrink)

This paper examines commonly offered arguments to show that human behavior is not deterministic because it is not predictable. These arguments turn out to rest on the assumption that deterministic systems must be governed by deterministic laws, and that these give rise to predictability "in principle" of determined events. A positive account of determinism is advanced and it is shown that neither of these assumptions is true. The relation between determinism, laws, and prediction in practice is discussed as a question (...) in scientific epistemology. (shrink)

A study of the medieval foreknowledge problem: an apparent conflict between God's universal infallibility and human freedom. To say that God is universally infallible is to say that for every proposition, God's believing that proposition implies that it is true. Let's say that the belief implies its object. So God's belief yesterday that Jones will murder her neighbor today implies that she will murder him. Furthermore, the past is fixed, rendering propositions about the past true or false is impossible, so (...) it is too late today for Jones to do anything about God's yesterday-belief. So Jones, it seems, can do nothing about the murder. ;The flaw in the argument is that universal infallibility contradicts the fixity of the past. To see this, begin by asking: How is it that God's belief implies its object? I reject two initially promising attempts to account for this implication, and I endorse a third. This third account involves the claim that the essence of God requires that God have a belief only if it is true. Thus God's belief implies its object, and the object could be about the world outside God's mind. But saying that God's infallibility results from God's essence gives rise to the question of what prevents essential change in a thing. I argue that in God's case the only answer is God. This results in the claim that God renders the objects of God's beliefs true. Since some of God's beliefs are about the past, the past cannot be fixed. Of course, there are independent arguments for the fixity of the past, so I also refute the three such arguments that I take to be central. ;Given the above, the foreknowledge problem fails. One who accepts God's universal infallibility has already had to reject the fixity of the past. So there is no reason to worry that it is too late for an agent do anything about God's past beliefs or the present actions they imply. (shrink)

Though clearly fallacious, the inference from determinism to fatalism (the ``Lazy Argument'''') has appealed to such minds as Aristotle and his disciple, Alexander of Aphrodisias. It is argued here (1) that determinism does entail a rather similar position, dubbed ``futilism''''; and (2) that distinctively Aristotelian determinism entails fatalism for any event to which it applies. The concept of ``fate'''' is examined along the way.

In ”Incompatibilism and the Past,” Andrew Bailey engages in a thorough investigation of what he calls the "No Past Objection" to arguments for incompatibilism.This is an objection that stems from the work of Joseph Keim Campbell and that has generated an Interesting literature. Bailey ends by offering his own answer to the No Past Objection by giving his own argument for incompatibilism, an argument that he claims to be immune to the objection. We have some observations to make regarding what (...) we take to be Bailey's answer to the objection. (shrink)

In studying causation, many examples are presented assuming that determinism holds in the world of the example such as the notoriously difficult to resolve preemptive and preventative situations. We show that for deterministic examples that this conditional preemptive situation is either (i)vacuously true, (ii)contradictory, or (iii) implies indeterminism. Along the way we formulate a specific block space-time definition of determinism, and suggest that commonsense causation theories need focus on unphysical quantities and indeterminism.

In this essay I attempt to identify the conditions of morally responsible action; and from the start, I conceive morally responsible action as free action. Some philosophers argue that the causal origins of an act are irrelevant to whether it is a free act; others believe that free acts cannot be causally determined; and still others believe that a free act is an act from which the agent must be capable of refraining. I defend a view at odds with each (...) of these positions: a free act may be causally determined by events over which the agent has no control, but it must issue from the agent's attitudes and beliefs in a particular way. On my account, moreover, though the ability to do otherwise is relevant to free agency, it is not a necessary condition: some free agents are incapable of refraining from the acts they perform. ;I develop my position by investigating three major challenges to the claim that someone is a free agent if and only if she has a certain attitude toward what she does. The first of these challenges comes from thought experiments in which mad scientists directly induce an agent's motives; the second, from the phenomenon of weakness of will; and the third, from the main argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. An essential feature of my response to these challenges is the appeal to a normative notion of will power. (shrink)

The book_ Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will_, published in 2010 by Columbia University Press, presented David Foster Wallace's challenge to Richard Taylor's argument for fatalism. In this anthology, notable philosophers engage directly with that work and assess Wallace's reply to Taylor as well as other aspects of Wallace's thought. With an introduction by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, this collection includes essays by William Hasker, Gila Sher, Marcello Oreste Fiocco, Daniel R. Kelly, Nathan Ballantyne, Justin (...) Tosi, and Maureen Eckert. These thinkers explore Wallace's philosophical and literary work, illustrating remarkable ways in which his philosophical views influenced and were influenced by themes developed in his other writings, both fictional and nonfictional. Together with _Fate, Time, and Language_, this critical set unlocks key components of Wallace's work and its traces in modern literature and thought. (shrink)

The paper presents a thorough exploration of the problem of persistence in a relativistic context. Using formal methods such as mereology, formal theories of location and the so called intrinsic formulation of special relativity we provide a new, more rigorous and more comprehensive taxonomy of persisting entities. This new taxonomy differs significantly from the ones that are present in the recent literature.

I take it for granted that free will is a central philosophical notion. Still, throughout Western history certain philosophers have put forth arguments which claim that no person has, or could have, free will. These arguments may be grouped into three different types. First, there are metalogical arguments which argue that since all propositions are either true or false, and since propositions do not change their truth-values, no person ever has free will. Second, there are divination arguments which claim that (...) there exists some divine being, perhaps God, with complete knowledge of all future events. Thus, no person ever has free will. Third, there are determinism arguments which suggest the truth of a general causal determinism which governs each object and event in the entire universe. Given this, it is supposed, no person ever has free will. I call these the inevitability arguments. ;In this dissertation I show that all of these arguments are unsound. I do this by showing, first, that each argument type is of the same general form which I call the basic structure. So, the arguments stand or fall together. The basic structure includes, beyond the information given above, another premise which claims that the past, or the set of God's beliefs, or the conjunction of the laws of nature is fixed and, in some sense, beyond our control. It is this premise, necessary to the validity of any inevitability argument, which I claim to be false. I show that there is some sense in which, say, the past is fixed but that this sense is unimportant to attributions of free will. Moreover, the sense of fixedness which is important to freedom is not undermined by the inevitability arguments. (shrink)

This dissertation makes two general arguments. First, I argue that we can reasonably address and decide between deterministic and anti-deterministic accounts of human behavior via standards of empirical, logical and moral consistency. Second, I argue that we must address this philosophical question about human behavior because our answer has profound implications for a range of applications. I demonstrate why it is important, both practically and theoretically, to make a studied, objective choice between deterministic and anti-deterministic theories.